Close associates of St. John Paul II journey toward Christ, the Redeemer of humanity, meeting the Holy Pope and sharing eternal joy with him.
On the night of October 24/25, 2023, Professor Wanda Półtawska, a friend and collaborator of John Paul II, passed away. A devoted friend, concerned for the entire family.
“To love a person means to love their vocation,” wrote Wanda Półtawska about her relationship with Karol Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II. In Krakow, she belonged to the closest collaborators of Karol Wojtyła. Her vocation was an enormous inspiration for the future pope. The patron of the family, as St. John Paul II is now called, believed that the future of humanity goes through the family.
They likely met in 1953, in the confessional, where Father Karol Wojtyła became the spiritual guide for Półtawska, then an assistant at the Psychiatric Clinic of the Academy of Medicine in Krakow. However, this spiritual relationship quickly evolved into a very concrete collaboration. Wojtyła became involved in Półtawska’s initiatives—a home for single mothers in need after childbirth and a marriage counseling center where he conducted retreats for crumbling marriages.
When Wojtyła became an archbishop, he immediately entrusted Półtawska with the role of chief advisor in family pastoral care. Półtawska immersed herself in work: “It slips through my fingers, too many human matters! I have to check, urge, and supervise. I am as active as I have never been, working non-stop.”
She was Wojtyła’s expert on sexual ethics, supporting him from a scientific perspective. In 1960, he published the book “Love and Responsibility” based on lectures in philosophy given at the Catholic University of Lublin. This ethical study of love and marriage contains many scientific fragments from the field of sexology, also striking in its consideration of the female perspective. She was deeply involved in helping people maturely experience their sexuality—in marital counseling and in the fight against abortion. She gained scientific knowledge and immense medical experience in this field, which Wojtyła knew how to leverage. Półtawska could greatly assist Wojtyła in creating this work, revolutionary for its time. Together with Półtawska, Wojtyła also undertook other actions. He included her in the team preparing a memorandum for Pope Paul VI on contraception. At his request, she prepared a counseling program for marriages in the Archdiocese of Krakow, also conducting training for volunteers in counseling centers. Together, in 1967, they founded the Family Institute, which she led for 33 years, an academic research branch dedicated to family pastoral care. Wanda Półtawska delivered lectures at seminars and conferences, conducted joint lectures for theology and medical students, and created materials for youth on the challenges of adolescence, writing several textbooks. When Wojtyła was elected pope, there were already 82 family counseling centers in the archdiocese.
She did not give up medical work either. She continued to see patients in the psychiatric outpatient clinic and counseling center. She felt she had a task to fulfill: “In this neurotic 20th-century world, I need to show the divine axis of integration. I probably cannot stop being a psychiatrist?” she wrote in reflections sent to her spiritual guide. Wojtyła added in the margin: “!! This is your vocation.”
Półtawska was almost the same age as the pope; they loved each other like brother and sister.
“A very young girl came to me, 18 years old, living with a man 15 years older than her. Today he got drunk and beat her, she came bleeding, her face swollen, lips cut, hair matted (…). I said nothing, I stroked her short-shaved head and prayed to her patron saint. It was a strange medical visit,” Wanda Półtawska noted in her diary. Even if many remembered her as an arrogant, sharp woman, her genuine concern for others was the main driver of her work. Even more fundamental to her commitment was the belief that she was fulfilling God’s will: “I think with gratitude to God for making me useful!” she wrote.
“Poor, twisted creature—an egocentric hysteric who, unable to keep her husband (who betrayed her), subconsciously escapes into illness. (…) I listened, listened, patiently holding her hand—how poor she was. Not the poverty that falls on a person and somehow even lifts him up, but the one that destroys a person from within (…),” Wanda Półtawska wrote in her diary, later published in the volume “Beskid Retreats.” Saving broken people became the goal of her life. Not even her stay in the concentration camp in Ravensbrück, where she was subjected to cruel medical experiments by the Germans, broke her. “It sounds paradoxical: at the moment when I was dying of hunger, and death was a matter of days, maybe even hours, I was planning life,” she recalls. After the war, she tried to help people discover their humanity, people who began to doubt humanity as a whole through their stay in concentration camps. The unrestrained desire to help others and the conviction of being called to this work by God made this collaborator of Wojtyła ready to perform almost miracles to make her work as effective as possible and to captivate as many people as possible. According to Półtawska, competencies are secondary because a person “captured” for service to others is ready to learn many things. People who said “it’s not suitable” irritated her. “What does it mean, why should you not be able?”. According to Półtawska, for everyone, one can find a place where they will be useful and where you can extract the maximum potential from them. You just have to “capture” them, and that is only possible when the right values are shown.
The values proposed by Półtawska were not easy. Perhaps that’s why she managed to attract so many people to collaboration. She worked beyond human strength, appreciating the value of rest, especially in the mountains, where she gladly hiked. Półtawska had four children. Her notes show immense fear that she neglects them due to professional duties.
Wanda Półtawska set the bar very high for herself, aware of the extraordinary dignity of work. She saw that when well done, its effects exceed expectations, not only externally—among their charges, patients, or students. Her own work also added dignity, which Karol Wojtyła appreciated so much. Not just because she worked in the field where he needed collaborators. According to Wojtyła, every job—if done in the right spirit—is worthy of respect. “Work is the good of man,” he wrote already as pope—”(…) through work, man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his needs, but also realizes himself as a human being and, in a way, more ‘becomes human.'”
When Cardinal Wojtyła became pope, Wanda Półtawska came to the Holy Father in Rome as a devoted friend, concerned for the entire family. She came with her husband, philosopher, and professor Andrzej Półtawski. Often also with her children. John Paul II sent recommendations and spiritual guidance to Wanda Półtawska. For example, excerpts from the Holy Scripture over which she had to reflect and meditate every day. She was also present in the last moments of the Pope’s life, watching over his bed. It was through the intercession of St. Pio of Pietrelcina that Karol Wojtyła prayed for her healing years ago. In 1962, Wanda Półtawska, then a mother of four daughters, fell ill with malignant cancer. Bishop Wojtyła was on his way to Rome for the first session of the Second Vatican Council. He wrote a letter to Father Pio asking for prayers for the sick. Półtawska was already on the operating table when the last examinations showed a medically inexplicable, complete healing of the affected area. From 1981 to 1984, Professor Wanda Półtawska was a lecturer at the Institute of Marriage and Family Studies named after St. John Paul II at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. In 1994, she was appointed a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. She also collaborated with the Pontifical Council for Health Workers, was a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family, a member of the Catholic Journalists Association, and a dame of the Order of the White Eagle. In 1964, she was awarded the Golden Badge “For Social Work for the City of Krakow,” in 1981, the “Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice” medal, and in 1999, the Medal of the Polish Senate, the Medal of St. Hedwig of the Pontifical Academy in Krakow, and the Commander’s Cross of the Papal Order of St. Gregory. She authored numerous publications on the pedagogy of marriage and family and human sexuality, a distinguished pro-life activist.
She will remain forever in our memory and prayers. May she rest in peace, and may eternal light shine upon her.
